Posted inPolitics Reality

Political and religious delusions have a lot in common

Reality only comes in one flavor: real. But humans aren't in direct touch with reality, so we have to struggle to make sense of the world, the universe, the cosmos. Thus the flavor of reality for us Homo sapiens has many varieties. Really, as many as there are people in the world, since everybody looks upon life in a unique way. Science is our most powerful means of coming to a consensus on the nature of reality. By and large, scientists the world over agree on core scientific tenets -- which is far different from the widely divergent ways politicians and…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Behold my use of “Wittgenstein” in this blog post title

I've been hanging onto my copy of the October 19 issue of The New Yorker because it contains a book review ("Losing Propositions") about the state of philosophy in Europe after the First World War. The review has numerous mentions of Ludwig Wittgenstein, "perhaps the most influential philosopher of the twentieth century." So this gives me the opportunity to use Wittgenstein in the title of this post -- which in my utterly subjective opinion, elevates the profundity of this blog to an even higher level. What I liked most  about the book review were the parts dealing with language that…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Reality — a horrible thing to waste (but Trump does)

Yesterday I wrote about Trump's COVID-19 diagnosis over on my Salem Political Snark blog in "Reality is the big winner in Trump's COVID-19 infection." Here's the most philosophical part of the post. Being as deeply philosophical as I am deeply political, I now want to broaden my take on the meaning of Trump coming down with COVID-19. It's a big win for reality! Not that reality needs any help. Reality always comes out on top in the end, because, well, reality is the only thing that is truly real.  A short blog post isn't the place to discuss what I…
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Posted inReality Religions

What is the problem religions are trying to solve?

One of the reasons I'm now an atheist after having embraced an Eastern form of religion for 35 years is that it eventually dawned on me that religions are trying to solve problems that don't really exist.  This isn't the case with other cultural institutions.  For example, health care agencies try to solve the problem of people getting sick. Environmental groups try to solve the problem of pollution. Educational advocates try to solve the problem of helping children learn. It's possible to disagree with how these problems are being addressed, but not with the fact that these are real problems.…
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Posted inReality

There is nothing but now — no past, no future

"Live in the now." That is an utterly meaningless statement. It's akin to saying, "Exist in existence." Well, yeah. As if we had a choice. There's no place to exist but in existence.  Where else are I supposed to exist? Non-existence? That'd be impossible. Equally impossible is for anything, naturally including we humans, to exist anywhere but in the present -- now. So save your money on books that claim to teach you how to live in the now. You're already expert at this. There's no place to be except now. But what about thoughts of the past and future?…
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Posted inReality

I try to explain my relationship with reality

Periodically I like to ponder my relationship with reality. Like, now. Hey, movie theaters aren't open here in Oregon. My wife and I aren't eager to test our COVID luck by going to a gym or restaurant. My Tai Chi classes are on hold, though this week we started meeting on Wednesday afternoon in a park. So I've had some extra time to contemplate ways reality and I can improve how we get along. Of course, the first thing I realized is that the burden of improving the quality of our relationship falls on me, not reality, since I'm the…
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Posted inReality

Blind belief feels good, but isn’t a reliable guide to truth

Here's a nice "guest blog post" from Osho Robbins, who emailed it to me yesterday. I like what he has to say. I"m continually amazed at how people can believe crazy stuff that has no basis in fact, reason, or demonstrable evidence.  They've just heard it from somewhere and embrace it because it feels like it could be true. That's incredibly lazy. It also is why there are so many defenders of Trump's countless lies, so many people who feel that masks aren't effective in combating the spread of the coronavirus, so many deniers of the reality of human-caused global…
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Posted inCoronavirus Reality

COVID reality is kicking Donald Trump in the butt

Reality can be harsh. And always, truthful. That's why reality is feared by religions and politicians alike. At least, religious believers and politicians who have a vested interest in denying facts because the truth is inconvenient for them. There's nothing positive that can be said about the COVID crisis here in the United States. According to a story I read in today's newspaper, the United States has 4.3% of the world's population but has suffered 25.5% of the COVID-19 deaths. Why?  Largely because we have a president who is utterly incompetent to manage a Little League team, much less a…
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Posted inReality

Mystery and Reality have an intriguing relationship

I'm a fan of both Mystery and Reality. I'm capitalizing their names to personalize them, as if they were beings we could actually interact with rather than abstract ideas. Mystery is, well, mysterious. (I'll use "she" to talk about her because, being a man, I find females to be more of a mystery than males.) You can't say much about her because there's not much to be said. She's what lies outside the bounds of our knowing. That makes Mystery intriguing, just as a beautiful woman in a suggestive dress makes us want to learn what lies beneath the surface…
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Posted inReality

Become an unknowing fool. It’s the wisest thing to do.

Here's another post from the early years of this blog that I just came across in the course of choosing content for my second book of Church of the Churchless posts. I'll probably keep on doing more of this "blast from the past" stuff until I'm finished with the second book, which doesn't have a name yet. The less time I spend on writing new content for this blog, the more time I'll have to work on that book. As before, the italicized introduction is what will accompany the post. I like to share a few thoughts about how I…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Brian Greene: “Nothing supersedes the laws of physics”

I've been needing some cosmic scientific perspective during my morning pre-meditation reading time, given how the coronavirus pandemic dominates the news and peoples' psyches. Physicist Brian Greene's new book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe," has been meeting that need nicely. He's an excellent writer, thinker, and popularizer of scientific truth.  Here's an example of what appealed to me in the first four chapters. I'm sure I'll be sharing more from the book as I get deeper into it. Nothing supersedes the laws of physics. I love this bold simple statement.…
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Posted inReality Religions

Perfection is an imaginary ideal, a lifeless dead end

This morning I finished the book I've been blogging about recently, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto, by Lesley Hazleton. It's a wonderfully thoughtful and well-written description of what it means to be an open-minded agnostic (or atheist), rather than a closed-minded religious believer. Below are some passages that I liked in the concluding chapter, "Imperfect Soul."  Hazleton starts out by debunking the notion of perfection. There's no such thing. Perfection, she says, is an idea, not a fact. This rings true for me, based on my 35 years of experience with an Indian religious organization whose teachings wrongly proclaim that there is…
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Posted inReality

Magic is in the details of everyday life

One of the most important things I've learned in my 70 years of living is this: the world is way more interesting than I am. So the more I can get out of my head, and into what surrounds me, the happier I am. By and large. There are exceptions to every rule, including this one.  As I've noted before, and surely will note again, mindfulness has become my meditation. I'm no longer seeking enlightenment, mystical uplift, or even self-knowledge.  In fact, I don't believe that I have, or am, an enduring self. The world exists. I exist. When I'm…
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Posted inBooks Reality

“The View from Nowhere” is a laudable goal

Quite a few years ago I heard of Thomas Nagel's book "The View from Nowhere," liking the provocative title. Nagel is better known for his What Is it Like to be a Bat? paper, which raised equally profound questions about subjectivity and objectivity.  No human knows what it is like to be a bat. Only a bat does.  The same is true of every species, and indeed of every individual within a species. I've been married to my wife, Laurel, for 29 years. So obviously I know her very well. But I don't know what it is like to be…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

Deep thoughts about a typo in my new book

I'm eager to write about a newfound typo in my recently published book, "Break Free of Dogma," for a couple of reasons. One is that this gives me another chance to plug my book, which is prominently displayed at the top of the right sidebar.  Also, I've got some deep thoughts about the typo that I just discovered in the book. It came to light today after I gave some copies of the book to my fellow Tai Chi students. Handing a book to Jeremy, I told him that several of the mini-chapters refer to Tai Chi, such as the…
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Posted inReality Religions

If God is beyond thought and language, then shut up if you’re religious

I'd like to rephrase in a more blunt fashion what I quoted Donald Hoffman as saying in yesterday's blog post. Here's Hoffman. If a system of thought, religious or otherwise, offers a claim that it wants taken seriously, then we should examine it with our best method of inquiry -- the scientific method. That is taking it seriously. Some topics -- such as God, the good, reality, and consciousness -- have been claimed to transcend the limited scope of human concepts and thus the methods of science. I have no quarrel with someone who claims this and then, being consistent,…
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Posted inReality Science

“The Case Against Reality” seems more right than wrong

It's rare that I find it difficult to put down a non-fiction book because I'm so eager to read the final chapters and grasp the author's concluding arguments. Such was the case, though, with The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman. I hadn't planned to spend so much time reading the book this morning, but I carried on until I'd read all but a technical appendix. Hoffman's Big Idea is this: evolution selects for fitness, not truth. If a living organism perceives reality well enough to be able to pass on its…
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Posted inReality Science

Calculus is cool. Spiritual, even. Infinity rocks.

Astoundingly, I'm enjoying a book about calculus, Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz. The subtitle is the reason: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe. Hey, I'm all in on having the secrets of the universe revealed to me. Especially when the cost was a mere $16.52 to have Amazon deliver the book to my doorstep.  I started this post with the word "astoundingly" because I was forced to take a calculus class in the first year of my Systems Science Ph.D. program studies way back when. (I completed the course work, but then gave up on being called Dr.…
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Posted inConsciousness Reality Science

Science is our best guide to a possible supernatural reality

Here's another comment from David C. Lane on a recent post of mine that makes so much sense, I'm sharing it even before I've even lunch. Sometimes my hunger for transmitting truth is greater than my stomach's yearning for food.  Didn't someone  once say, man does not live by bread alone? (or Trader Joe's meatless chick'n tenders). Lane talks about his Remainder Conjecture in which supernatural claims should only be accepted after a rigorous examination of them through the lens of science. This fits with David Hume's observation, which I wrote about yesterday, that we have a tremendous amount of…
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Posted inAtheism Reality Religions

Changing your mind is a superpower. Use it.

I have a superpower. But unlike those with superpowers who inhabit the pages of comic books and the screens of movie theaters, my astounding ability is available to everyone. It's called changing your mind.  I'm sure you've used it  -- many times. After all, we change our minds about countless things during the course of our lives. For example, I've changed my mind about my... Politics (Used to be conservative, now I'm a liberal). Cars (I've gone from a 57' VW bug to a 2017 VW GTI, with many other makes in between). Marriage (Got divorced, then remarried).Profession (Earned a master's…
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